


I Do

by Ladycat



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-13
Packaged: 2018-01-12 05:45:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1182600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladycat/pseuds/Ladycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ric sits up while Damon thinks in a way that is not brooding, an activity reserved for his Ripper-less brother, and stares through watery, wobbling eyes.  “You really did mean it.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Do

_I do a lot of things I don’t have to do._

The words are pretty, a quip that feeds into his mystique. Damon even means it, if you pin him down enough. Trying not to squirm under Ric’s mournful puppy gaze isn’t a banner moment he’ll trot out on cold, boring nights. Not like—

But he doesn’t think about that. Not so much. Because doing what you want only works when you have nothing to lose. So of course he thinks of her, long brown hair a curtain that hides her softness from the world, eyes that show strength, a steel beam that promises unyielding focus. Laser like, really. As—

“Come _on_ , man,” Ric sighs. There’s a drink in his hand. 

Like usual. Damon frowns at that, then at Ric, twisting lithely in his chair just to make the other man twitch just a little. Not in his shoulders, either. The frown changes into a smirking squint. “Precisely what am I supposed to be coming on?”

“Shut up.”

“No, really. First you implore me to come on, I ask a reasonable question and now I’m supposed to shut up?” Damon flutters his eyelashes. 

If they weren’t in the stupid lack of a real bar in this town, something Damon remembers lamenting when he breathed air out of necessity, he’s pretty sure Ric would hit him. Instead he downs another drink. Then one more. And really, something needs to be done there. He’d hoped that playing papa to kids who sorely need the influence, whatever their voiced opinions on the matter, would help a little. Ric was the kind of man who needed a purpose. Dutiful husband, righteous vampire hunter, really playing father confessor and teacher is the logical next step.

Three shots in as many minutes vanish. “You’re blushing,” Damon observes. “Interesting. Something you need to talk about, sweetie?”

This time the blush is deliciously red, fragrant as the wine he so rarely indulges in. Gives him a terrible headache. Bad dreams, too, and if Stefan—the _right_ Stefan—were around he’d toss out those soft, breathy words like maudlin. Damon rejects that notion entirely.

Only he’s actually craving a bit of that wine right now. More so as Ric turns from gold to crimson. It’s really alarming, which Damon is just about to point out when Ric sits down. Well, falls. Onto his stool, yes, but there’s a sense of inevitability that the floor is going to greet him probably in the next few seconds.

Damon sighs. “Good god, man, if you’re going to drink like a fish, shouldn’t you make sure you have the gills for it? Come on.”

“That’s what I just said,” Ric complains, but he leans without a fuss when Damon gets an arm around him. He smells good. He should, since he’s made of Damon’s _food_ , but mostly he just smells… good. Earthy and solid, like the woods Damon still goes running in just because he can ( _lots of things I don’t have_ ), crisp and clean. Resisting the urge to lean in, Damon half-carries the heavily besotted man back to his car. 

“Hey. This isn’t—isn’t the Gilbert house.”

An interesting slip, but Damon dismisses it before it gives him a headache. Does he have any wine? If he’s going to have one, he might as well enjoy the lead up. “Your powers of observation remain sharp.”

“You’re being nice again.”

“I’m always nice to my friends. Remember?”

The scoffing denial lends Ric enough energy to get him inside the house. Damon isn’t quite sure how they end upstairs in his own bedroom, but Ric is heavy and warm (like sunshine, and he shivers remembering how it had burned this morning, leaning into something that can never cause him pain) and he looks so comfortable on Damon’s silk sheets that he just doesn’t have the heart. Sighing, despairing, and looking damn pretty while he does it, he discovers that he does indeed have wine and pours himself a glass.

Which he then hands to Ric. And keeps the bottle.

“You aren’t, though.”

“Of course I am. Unless you’d rather you were tossed out on your butt?” 

“They’d’ve called me a cab.” Ric has his face mashed in Damon’s pillow. There’s probably going to be drool.

“And then you would have had to deal with the fluttering, incompetent assistance of a girl who has no idea what a truly righteous hangover is like. Do you really want her to hold back your hair?”

The answer is, of course, yes. He does. Because the girl has some sort of bizarre gravitational pull that impedes any ounce of good sense, or even not so good sense, that Damon has. He’s always been the smarter brother. More knowing of himself and how that relates to, well, anyone that’s important. And of course she’s important, and of course Ric is flinching, because Elena has that doe-like helplessness that makes every male in eye sight want to do their level best to offer protection, to _be_ that male she can depend on. So does Damon. The manly displays of manliness are constant enough that Damon’s starting to get bored.

Not that it stops him from doing the same damn thing.

Ric sits up while Damon thinks in a way that is not brooding, an activity reserved for his Ripper-less brother, and stares through watery, wobbling eyes. “You really did mean it.”

“Yes,” Damon sighs, head tilting back and bringing the neck of the wine bottle with him, “we’ve established the fact that I am whatever name it is you’re refusing to use. Because you’re the _nice_ one.”

“No.” Dogged. It’s an appropriate word for Ric, though one Damon tries not to use. It always sounds so fond. “No,” he says again, half-crawling to the foot of the bed. “You meant it. You trust me. And you want to be friends with me.”

_I do a lot of things._

Damon lets his eyes widen. Truly looks, from rumbled knees to the beginning of an alcoholic’s tell-tale flush on cheeks that were, previously, that perfect babysoftness so rarely found in adulthood. It makes him look dependable. Handsome.

Damon has no fricking idea why those things are important to him.

“No.”

“What? But I’m saying that—“

“I know what you’re saying, Ric. And the answer is still no. I won’t do that.”

_That I don’t have to._

Because it’s all about want, with him. Damon knows that. He’s always known that since the moment he realized Katherine was playing him all those decades ago. When he stopped hanging out in forests that offered no solace, when he finally went out in the world and discovered that it didn’t have to hurt. That it _doesn’t_ hurt, so long as he does any and everything he wants, with no regard for the consequences. 

There never had been any, before.

Tonight, Damon had faced one head on and found himself dismissed and wanting. He’d faced another and done something previously only Stefan, or possibly the girl he refuses to think about when Ric is trying to crawl across the floor to him, dogged—again—and intent on something Damon knows he should stop, could get him to do. 

Apologies always taste like wooden stakes.

The third, though, is the one he regrets the most. No, at all. The only one he regrets at all. Lexi was a smug little bitch. She’s also the only proven method of restoring Damon’s brother. Yearning, quick as a stiletto to the heart, swamps him so suddenly that Damon sways with it, dizzy and probably drunk, working hard to push it away. The same way he does Ric. Only Ric topples back onto his ass and looks up at him so mournfully that almost, almost, Damon leans down and gives him what he wants.

Instead he stops, hand above a wildly beating heart—desperation like more ashes, like apples lost to a blaze, tart and bitter at the same time—and says, one more time, “No, Alaric. That’s not what you want.”

“Like you have any idea what that is,” Ric scoffs.

“Oh, I do. That’s probably the saddest part. I know what you want and because I _am_ your friend, I’m going to do what I want to do. Because I want to.”

No other reason.

That confuses Alaric, or maybe it’s the second glass of wine he forces him to drink, knowing it’ll make him sleep hard and deep, enough that maybe he’ll get something actually like rest instead of the mockery of unconsciousness he’s been swimming in all summer. In a moment, he’ll get Ric into bed and possibly even give him a faint impression of what he wants, since Damon has no intention of sacrificing his own bed. Only after he’s gone to check on Stefan and maybe find his own way to make the man remember what it is to feel, to reach that core of him hidden under spells and blood.

Damon the detox man. It has a terrible ring to it.

But Damon does a lot of things he doesn’t have to do.


End file.
